Quantifying Sea Level Fall

The background to this is that, in 2009, evil environmentalists in the New South Wales Government made a regulation that councils in that state would have to base their building permits on an expected sea level rise of 900 mm by 2100. This had the effect of wiping billions of dollars off the value of coastal properties, as well as ruining peoples’ lives etc. By comparison, sea level rose 200 mm in the 20th Century.

The NSW Govt. regulation was gleefully enforced by Lake Macquarie Council to the detriment of its residents. Lake Macquarie is 140 km north of Sydney. In response, a local property developer, Mr Jeff McCloy, organised a public meeting at which Professor Ian Plimer, Professor Bob Carter and myself spoke. 400 people attended on four days’ notice. The subject of the public meeting was sea level rise.

Before we go on to the oceans, let’s start with a smaller body of water first – Lake Victoria in East Africa. It was known back in the 1920s that the level of Lake Victoria went up and down with the solar cycle. This is the data on the level of Lake Victoria from 1896 to 2005:

The relationship with solar activity broke down in the 1930’s and resumed in the 1970’s. There was also a very rapid rise in the 1960’s. Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown and detrending the data from 1968, this is what the relationship looks like (data courtesy of Dr Peter Mason):

There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria, which also means that East Africa has about 30 years of drought ahead of it based on what is going to happen to solar activity.

The good correlation between sea level rise and solar activity is evident. What is very interesting is that during four solar minima over the 20th Century, sea level fell during those minima. That means that during prolonged low solar activity, sea level can be expected to continue falling. That relationship is quantified in this graph:

Using the period of best fit from 1948 to 1987, the relationship between solar activity and sea level is found to be 0.045 mm per unit of sunspot number. The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises. We can now combine that with Livingston and Penn’s estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude of 7 to derive this graph of seal level rise from 1870 with a projection to 2040:

Sea level has a few more mm of rise to the maximum of Solar Cycle 24 in 2013 and then will fall 40 mm to 2040 taking us back to levels of the early 1990s.

Now back to the subject of Lake Macquarie: the nearest high quality sea level data is from Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour. This is the record from 1915 to 2009:

The rise over the 20th Century has been slight, so slight that it can be compared to human hair which on average is 0.1 mm thick. The rise has been an average of 5 human hair widths per annum, with most of that over 60 years ago. Let’s compare that with what the NSW Govt and Lake Macquarie Council are projecting for the 21st Century:

I have called sea level rise the second last refuge of the global warming scoundrel, with ocean acidification being the last refuge. It no longer provides any refuge now that the relationship with solar activity has been quantified.

103 thoughts on “Quantifying Sea Level Fall”

If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations. If the sea level does not rise, the govt. will eventually have to admit they’re wrong, and change the law, at which time the land will increase in value.

Yes. Well. The Lake Macquarie Council has looked at the Sun and found it to be irrelevant.

One wonders if any Council members or their associates have been kind enough to help out the soon-to-be victims by purchasing their properties at a discount, knowing how worthless they will most certainly be. Such acts of supreme generosity and altruism are well known among the “climate concerned community.” They are very special, and very caring.

However, I wish that scientists on either side of the debate would not use expressions like “There is no doubt about the relationship…” It is far better to use expressions like “The good correlation between…” suggests that it is likely that…’

There are diverse pieces of evidence for a “great climate shift” of 1970. One piece could be in the Lake Victoria levels, but it is in many places. It’s in the land temperature record of Australia.
So, why is the tide gauge record around Australia not showing it, when Lake Victoria is?
Discovering the reason why would provide valuable input into processes, be threy global or regional – or artefacts.

No wonder both Combet, the Minister for Climate Change …snort snort… and the raving looney Commisioner for Climate Change Tim Flannery, have in quite recent times bought properties at or near sea level.

Combet near Nobbys Light house in Newcastle and Flannery in Sydney harbour

A. Opinion says:
February 3, 2012 at 3:53 pm
If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations. If the sea level does not rise, the govt. will eventually have to admit they’re wrong, and change the law, at which time the land will increase in value.

No, no they won’t. Government never ‘gives’ anything up. I hope you are exhibiting sarcasm.

In California, there is a long history of bureaucracies devaluing private property in order to enlarge public lands. Another trick is to force land acquisitions in exchange for the right to do something requiring a permit on your own property. The poorly defined “stakeholder” interest is one of the regulator’s main tools, a sledgehammer to destroy property rights.

Impressive correlation with little discernable lag until solar cycle 22, where sea level change follows solar activity a few years later. How to square this mostly contemporaneous correlation with the 7 to 15 year lags that many other researchers have found between solar activity and temperature?

Could make sense under the GCR-cloud theory, where solar activity reduces the formation of sun blocking clouds. That would allow more direct solar melting of ice and snow, having a particulary immediate effect on sea level, while temperature effects could somehow take longer to show up.

Immediate melting effects might even explain WHY temperature effects take longer to show up, if the melted snow and ice have the effect of cooling the ocean surface. Freshwater is less dense, correct? So does it spread out on the ocean surface? The question then would be whether it is actually colder than the salt ocean water, which has a lower freezing point, and hence COULD be colder than the melt water in northern climes. Melting glaciers that outflow at lower latitudes would certainly cool the ocean.

If a government is worried about excessive sea level rise, it should limit itself to refusing public flood insurance to properties in the affected areas (come to think of it, government has no business in the flood insurance business anyway). If a disaster follows, too bad, no bailout.

Buyers can then decide for themselves whether to take a chance on beachfront property.

Can you describe the physical mechanism by which solar activity causes Lake Victoria’s level to vary? Is the same behaviour seen on other African Great Lakes? What made the hypothesised solar mechanism stop working for 30 years? Why does your supposedly “updated” graph stop in 1999?

Sea levels have risen in the past, they might rise again. If your house is in a risky zone, you should make other safe investment instead of spending everything in short-term luxuries. There is no economic difference between spending in luxuries and spending to rebuild your house or move it. A rise of 1 meter could generate absolutely no lose if people are aware of it and compensate with other safe investments like an insurance and some placements. Political groups like to interpret economy in the way they want. I you are aware of the risk, it is not a lost. If you pay 10 000$ extra for a car, you are guarantied to lose it within 20 years because cars are not eternal. If you buy a house on the sea side, you have a risk of not loosing it if sea level does not rise.

“If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations. If the sea level does not rise, the govt. will eventually have to admit they’re wrong, and change the law, at which time the land will increase in value”

You’ll doubtless have to take your place at the back of the queue…..with government officials and prominent greens in front of you.

“There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria, which also means that East Africa has about 30 years of drought ahead of it based on what is going to happen to solar activity. ”

Wow this is horrible. Cherry picked, detrended wiggle matching used to prove there’s a sun correlation and then you top it off with complete SWAG on future sun conditions to drive home the catastrophic prediction.

If the prophets of CAGW used this line of reasoning to bolster one of their arguments this website would rightly tear them a new one. BTW my money is on splitting the predicted CAGW sea level rise and the anti-CAGW predicted fall almost dead in between.

You picked the “period of best fit from 1948 to 1987″ which is 39 years of data out of 90 years of data. Then you state that “The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises.”

This is complete rubbish. Even your “period of best fit” has eight data points with sunspot numbers below 40 and rising sea levels and seven data points with numbers below 40 and sea levels falling.

With the trend of 3.1 mm/year there would be about 28 cm sea level rise if the trend continues. That is a fact. Whether the trend continues or not nobody knows.

Actually the last graph would prove the point nicely without the solar connection. Just from looking at the graph and knowing that Nature runs in cycles, the only rational prediction would be a very slight upward trend for the next decade, then slightly down for a few decades. The wild upward line predicted by the government is obviously wrong by any standard. “Straight up forever” is always wrong in Nature.

Just a little nitpicking (or is it knit picking). Flannery’s property is not on Sydney Harbour but the Hawkesbury River about 50 north. It is open to the ocean as is Lake Macquarie. Lake Victoria is not I fancy. Is this significant? It’s temporarily stopped raining in soggy Sydney but a large area of northern New South Wales is under (rain)water as is Southern Queensland; that’s three years running for some parts. Our leading climate projectionists (is that a word?) had projected extended droughts and water shortages and recommended desal plants for major cities. Is there a market for second-hand desal plants? Cheers from Downunder.

Lake Victoria sits in a dome around which the East African Rift System has progressed. This is one of the most active seismic regions of Earth with inches of spreading and thermal bulging each year. The link below includes this phrase: “one (of) the geologic wonders of the world”http://geology.com/articles/east-africa-rift.shtml

Just saying — there might be better places to examine lake levels and sun activity.

According to the University of Colorado data, global sea levels have been actually FALLING since 2009:

This fall would be even more pronounced if it were not for the artificial lift of 0.3 mm that the panic-stricken activist administrators of this dataset added in May 2011. The reason they claimed for this was “a correction of 0.3 mm/year added May, 5th 2011, due to a ‘Glacial Isostatic Adjustment’ (GIA)”. But even this artificial and false leg-up given to the dataset does not change the continuous drop in sea level since mid 2009.

The relationship with solar activity broke down in the 1930’s and resumed in the 1970’s.
I’m no scientist nor mathematician. Having said that, I don’t care for a graph that has to leave out data just because it doesn’t work. How many times has the Hockey Stick been sneered at because it leaves out an inconvenient truth. Even, or especially if the data from the 30’s through the 70’s doesn’t fit your theory you have to show it…. or you’re open to the same accusations of cooking the graph to make it pretty.

Just say that you don’t know why your theory quit working for 40 years. If that weakens your argument, so be it; at least it’s transparent.

Minister for Truth says:
February 3, 2012 at 4:29 pm Dear Minister for Truth. Reference Tim Flannery. Look at your atlas again. It must be several million years out of date because where Mr Flannery bought on the Hawkesbury River is nowhere near Sydney Harbour.

Two comments.
1. The graph after the words “That has now been updated as: ” stops at 1999. The last cycle on the graph appeared to be drifting out of phase. What happens if you update to 2011.
2. Whilst the rate of change appears to vary with sunspot activity the average is greater than zero. You give the r2 value but you don’t give the equation which looks as if it is something like:
rate of rise = 2 mm/yr + a * sunspot_number , where a is a constant.
If this is correct then levels will continue to rise even if sunspot activity dies down.

phlogiston, I see from the graph that you supplied that sea level rises to a peak in about October-November each year. I’m curious. Why is it so? A lot of comments here ask for an account of why sea levels vary. So, I set out to investigate.

There is no doubt that the sea rises and falls according to its heat content. It’s thermally driven.

I note that sea surface temperature peaks on a global and northern hemisphere basis in July whereas in the southern hemisphere where the bulk of the ocean resides the peak in surface temperature is in January.

However, sea surface temperature is much influenced by the speed of the wind and is therefore no real guide to the temperature of the waters beneath.

As you can see surface pressure at 60-70° south has fallen as the globe has warmed.

The fall in surface pressure at 60-70°south is in response to the coupling of the stratosphere and the troposphere over Antarctica. Ozone is driven into the troposphere, warms because it absorbs infrared radiation from the surface and is carried towards the equator by the counter westerlies at mid to high altitudes. The phenomenon is described as the Southern Annular Mode of inter-annual climate variation.

It seems reasonable to assert that the great bulk of the southern oceans warm strongly in winter when the subtropical high pressure cells (cloud free skies) expand in part driven by summer heating in the northern hemisphere. At the same time ozone is driven into the troposphere warming the mid and upper levels, drying the air and reducing cloud cover.

The mechanisms and ultimate dependence on solar activity are described at my website. In short, cloud levels in the troposphere depend upon the ozone content of the southern stratosphere.

I live in Melbourne Australia and had been contemplating moving north because of expected
global cooling . However I am uncertain whether the northern half of Australia will
receive more rain or less . Would somebody bring to the table some logic explaining
which regions of Australia will move towards drought and which towards more rainfall .

I remain sceptical about what is proposed here. Firstly, I don’t see what Lake Victoria has to do with sea level, as it is mainly driven by precipitation as an input and evaporation as an output. Also if the relationship between the sun’s activities and water level breaks down twice in the timescale shown then there isn’t a relationship.

Similarly, I am dubious about the claim of a relationship between the rate of sea level rise and sunspots, notwithstanding that I can see no difference between the original and “update” graphs. I agree that there are points where they align but many other points where they don’t. Without some explanation of the mechanisms at work which would also explain the points of disparity, then I think using this “correlation” to look into the future is misguided.

See level measurements are of very questionable value and more to do with tectonics than climate. North coast of Adriatic sea (my homeland) is sinking by about 10cm /century, and consequently the roman coastal roads are now submerged.
Even most casual look at any ‘tectonic plates map’ (google the image) will show that many of the plates follow the oceans’ boundaries.. In other cases when they do not there are still movements resulting from the last ice age, e.g. Scotland is going up by about 10cm/ century while south of England is sinking.
Even warmists acknowledge the fact as in here:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6226537/England-is-sinking-while-Scotland-rises-above-sea-levels-according-to-new-study.html
Any assessment of the sea level rise, based on the long term coastal gauges, assigned to the global temperature changes could be a bit of nonsense

I’m a cynic. A councillor, like others on the CAGW gravy train, can make a bundle of dough by riding the bad news bandwangon, in this case talking down waterfront property…..No apologies for saying this. Just check in 5 years who owns what.

its not only lake Macquarie council it is Gosford “green” council who told old people in nursing homes and retirement villages that they better move or they will be under water also they changed the building code eg a new house will have to be built on 6ft high piers what a load of Bull dust

I was raised on Lake Macquarie and one of the ways I checked the evidence on sea level rising was to keep an eye on a water level marker put in decades ago to mark water levels near Fennel Bay bridge, easily seen on the rock platform on the north side of the bridge from the car window. The water level has not changed outside its usual seasonal, weather and tidal influences in the almost 50 years I’ve known it. I asked my aunt who has lived on Lake Macquarie and the ocean beaches nearby how much the water level has changed in the over 90 years she has known it. She said not that she could notice. Our family spent most of their spare time there and caught a lot of their food from there in the depression.

I know this is not “scientific” evidence, but it is observable and testable. So do I believe what my eyes tell me (and my aunt) or do I believe Tim Flannery and the Lake Macquarie City Council?

The council is full of “greenies” or watermelons – definitely red on the inside. And it is not just waterfront properties, also ones with trees on them. They leaped onto the Rio earth summit way back and also the Agenda 21 to, in effect, confiscate land with trees on it. So I was very aware from the 90s of the link with carbon credits, and land confiscation.

The actions of the council are all about the power and the glory, any excuse will do, the environment is great as it covers everything.

Here is another example of the wisdom and reasonableness of the LMCC. Martinsville valley has land grants dating back the 1840’s. It was cleared and used as dairies, market gardens and commercial orchards as late as the 1970’s. Since then the “blockies” (weekenders) have moved in. LMCC zoned it environmental protection after the Rio earth summit, at the encouragement of the State government, from the federal government going to the Rio earth summit and applying the UN Agenda 21 principles, and also Federal Government wanting to meet its carbon quotas at the expense of rural land. Now if you want to put ONE cow on your 40 acres of land you must put in a Development Application. They don’t often police the cows, not unless you have a fight with a neighbour and they complain – but needing a DA to put one cow on 40 acres!! (You don’t need a DA for 2 horses but you do if you want more than 2).

I don’t quite see the connection with Lake Victoria, or even the solar cycles.

The data indicates sea level correlates with solar magnetic cycle period without lag.

Why? Physically what is causing sea level to increase and decrease? It cannot be temperature as there would be a significant lag as the oceans warm and cool if temperature was driving the change.

The paleoclimatic record shows peculiar increases and decreases of sea level which can correlate with abrupt changes to the solar cycle and the geomagnetic field at “Heinrich events”.. There is a 20 m net change in sea level at the Heinrich events. It has assumed that ice sheet changes was causing the change, however there is an unexplained rise of 10 m in sea level and then fall of 10 m at the Heinrich event.

What we are about to experience is either a Dansgaard-Oeschger event or a Heinrich event. A solar magnetic cycle interruption is the cause of both events.

Based on what has happened before sea level will abruptly fall. The fall in sea will be significantly greater than can be explained by cooling or by mass changes oceans to ice sheets & glaciers.

From Wikipedia:
“Heinrich events are global climate fluctuations which coincide with the destruction of northern hemisphere ice shelves, and the consequent release of a prodigious volume of sea ice and icebergs. The events are rapid: they last around 750 years, and their abrupt onset may occur in mere years (Maslin et al.. 2001). Heinrich events are observed during the last glacial period; the low resolution of the sedimentary record before this point makes it impossible to deduce whether they occurred during other glacial periods in the Earth’s history.

Heinrich events occur during some, but not all, of the periodic cold spells preceding the rapid warming events known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events, which repeat around every 1,500 years. However, difficulties in establishing exact dates cast aspersions on the accuracy—or indeed the veracity—of this statement. Some (Broecker 1994, Bond & Lotti 1995) identify the Younger Dryas event as a Heinrich event, which would make it H0.”

A GOVERNMENT-RUN research body has found in an extensive study of corals spanning more than 1000km of Australia’s coastline that the past 110 years of ocean warming has been good for their growth.

The findings undermine blanket predictions that global warming will devastate coral reefs, and add to a growing body of evidence showing corals are more resilient than previously thought, up to a certain point.

Coastal councils and the State government are covering their respective backsides. They did the same thing with floodplain planning because a few houses along the Georges river (part of Sydney) were flooded after receiving council approval to build. The lazy sods found a height of the previous highest flood and extrapolated across the valley. Many houses which had escaped flooding were deemed to have been flooded with serious financial consequences. In the case of AGW sea level rise it is another example of how fraudulent science adversely affects many innocent people. Jail is really too good for some of them.

A lot of CAGW people become indignant and complain that sceptics are undermining the scientific argument that global warming is happening – that 97% of 2700 climate scientists supposedly accept is happening .The only reason they can say this is because some of them must be reading sites like this otherwise they wouldn’t even know there is another side to the argument. A quick scan of the responses above indicates that not many people – maybe one – wants to object to or refute the evidence that indicates a correlation between sun activity and sea level rise. As a matter of fact, although they visit the site very few object to any of the matter presented here. I’m a sceptic for what I think are logical reasons [most definitely not poltical or economic reasons or “in the pocket of big oil” reasons], but the engineer in me just wants to see the logical argument and is quite prepared to listen to and evaluate the arguments of alarmists. There just aint much argument put up apart from the “may”s and “could”s and models. So, alarmists, please rebutt the implied conclusions in the article above. Convince us here, not through a press release or a biased editorial. If you can just convince me that sea level is still rising significantly I’d be happy because that would at least explain some missing heat. We’re the villains so convince us here, not elsewhere. If you can convince the readership of this site then you’re making headway. I am sure most of he readership would be happy to listen to reasoned hypothesis even if scientific facts and conclusions cannot be presented in an immediate timeframe of a blog. The silence of the CAGW camp has become deafening in the last 12 months.

About all these scary alarmist warnings that are now being exposed as ‘voodoo science’… you know, like dangerous sea level rises. The only way this nonsense will ever be put to a stop is by legal action… by holding to account councils and bureaucrats pushing this drivel, which causes untold damage to people such as falls in property values, increases in insurance cover, etc.

Until the bureaucrats behind all this damaging scaremongering are held to account and prosecuted for engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct that directly resulted in unnecessary losses being suffered by property owners, the global warming band wagon and its potion of climate lies will continue to be promoted.

Towards the end of the article are some modern graphs to put the historical changes into context. I also clarify how much should be added to the graph I used in order to bring it up to date. We currently remain somewhat below the sea levels appertaining during the Roman period and also it would seem the MWP

Not a fan of most comparative studies between freshwater bodies and oceans, generally. Mostly the only thing they have in common is that the preponderant ingredient is water. In lakes, you also have to consider sedimentation rate when you are looking at level rate trends, among other things.

No wonder both Combet, the Minister for Climate Change …snort snort… and the raving looney Commisioner for Climate Change Tim Flannery, have in quite recent times bought properties at or near sea level.
———-
Like anyone else they can look at the rates of sea level rise at a particular place and work out that it won’t affect them over the lifetime of their occupancy.

So it appears you are interested in cheap shots and have no interest in the truth at all. So your 1984 reference is rather apt.

“The relationship with solar activity broke down in the 1930’s and resumed in the 1970’s. There was also a very rapid rise in the 1960’s. Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown and detrending the data from 1968, this is what the relationship looks like (data courtesy of Dr Peter Mason):”
Sorry but this does not compute for me. Why? I see the cherries landing all around me.
“There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria,”…

The first statement belies the second without some pretty serious explanation.

The rest of the article about the actual sea level is OK, but as others have said, I don’t see how you can update a graph from year 2000 to year 1999.

I keep expecting Willis to leap out from behind a tree and shout “Fooled you again, suckers!”

Just in case Willis is looking down on this from his high horse that is meant to be funny!

A couple of others have made similar points to the one I am about to make, but you act as though a slowing in the rate of rise is a decline — it is not. You claim that “The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises.”

There were only 7 years in your scatter-plot diagram where the rate of increase was negative, i.e., declining. While those all occured when sun spots were <40, the sad fact is that in your own graph, the rate of increase was positive (8 observations) more often than negative when sun spots <40.

While I am intrigued by your analysis and am a skeptic of warmists' claims, this is indeed sloppy and we would rip apart a warmist who presented a similar argument in support of a theory that picks our pockets to advance a pro-govt agenda.

Replicant says:
February 3, 2012 at 7:28 pm
“With the trend of 3.1 mm/year there would be about 28 cm sea level rise if the trend continues. That is a fact. Whether the trend continues or not nobody knows.”

If I were you, I wouldn’t worry.
You only have a life expectancy of two years.

No wonder both Combet, the Minister for Climate Change …snort snort… and the raving looney Commisioner for Climate Change Tim Flannery, have in quite recent times bought properties at or near sea level.
———-
Like anyone else they can look at the rates of sea level rise at a particular place and work out that it won’t affect them over the lifetime of their occupancy. ”

Yes, and like anyone else in a position of power capable of driving the price of an asset down, they did it, then bought it.
NOW, of course, they own it, so the next step is to make a U-turn, explain to everyone that they erred and that sea level rise isn’t that much of a problem, then sell it for a much better price.
Does Australia has a minimum time that you have to own a property so that you can sell it without paying tax on the profit? In Germany, that time is 10 years.

To all the people who deride Archibald for the “cherry picking”; why can’t any of you use a search engine?

The correlation between water levels of Lake Victoria and sunspot numbers; and water availability and famine in the the region, have been the subject of research for more than 100 years.http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/alexander2707.pdf
“After the commissioning of the Owen Falls dam and power station in 1954, at
Jinja on the mouth of the Main Nile, flows
through the power station were maintained
on a ten-day rolling basis so as to match the
flows which would have occurred, had the
Ripon Falls still been the control. Thus, in
effect, the natural Nile outflows were maintained
in an unbroken form up until June
2000. This requirement was enshrined in
the Nile Waters Agreement. In June 2000
the new Kiira power station was commissioned
in parallel to the original station and
subsequent extractions then exceeded the
‘natural’ ones.”

“However, in the early 1960s
a dramatic rainfall increase over central and
east Africa raised the lake to unprecedented
levels. To meet ‘agreement’ requirements from
the 1960s onwards, the sluice gates at the
dam had to discharge excess water, beyond
those which could be used for generation.
The rainfall event and the climate anomaly it
produced have been thoroughly reported by
Lamb (1966).”

Why? Physically what is causing sea level to increase and decrease? It cannot be temperature as there would be a significant lag as the oceans warm and cool if temperature was driving the change.”

Please excuse me, Bob Dylan:

It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don’t know by now

I fear we are using the same causal approach as that of the AGW crowd and mistaking correlation for cause and effect. Perhaps the time series approach is slightly more valid though it appears that this case is substantially over stated.

“To all the people who deride Archibald for the “cherry picking”; why can’t any of you use a search engine?”

Why would I need to search engine to see if he cherry picked the data, he said so in his post.
Here it is: “Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown ” He then shows us a graph with part of the data removed.

So he wiggle matched when it was convenient and disregarded the rest. No explanation given,

I think there is a great danger in relying on limited data sets. Sea levels have risen about 130 meters over the past 20,000 years (you can track the more exact figures if you think it necessary). That works out to about 6 mm. per year. Over the past century, the rate has averaged perhaps 2 mm. per year. It appears that the rate is slower now than it was earlier in the interglacial period of the current Ice Age.

The stock market and the weather fluctuate — so we are wiser to look back further if we hope to predict the coming century more accurately, being aware that sudden changes in direction have occurred. We should all be cautious about enthusiastic predictions that because the weather is warmer in February than in January, that within a few years we will all be hotter than Hades.

Jerry says:
February 4, 2012 at 9:32 am
“Why would I need to search engine to see if he cherry picked the data, he said so in his post.
Here it is: “Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown ” He then shows us a graph with part of the data removed.”

Curiousity, maybe? Asking yourself whether there is an explanation for the breakdown of the relationship? As for “wiggle matching”, read the article I linked to. It’s very interesting. Many people before David Archibald have researched it. Calling it “wiggle matching” is demeaning to all of them. You can’t hold Archibald responsible for your ignorance.

Why dose everyone seem to have a problem with exuding data that was the result of known out of process activity, i.g. dam building and extreme rainfall events, especially when the author plainly states that the data was excluded because of a break down in correlation? If he wanted to hide non-correlation, he would not have said that. Any correlation in the missing years was swamped by KNOW factors, which means those years are irrelevant. Lake Victoria height is directly related to local rainfall and until the 50’s, evaporation. It is fed only by small streams a two small rivers. It has a large surface area and is relatively shallow (especially by rift lake standards). It sits on a geological active dome.

If I am trying to monitor my utility bill, relative to temperature, the data from the period where I was remodeling my kitchen and a wall was torn out would probably not be useful. And I would have to split the data between the periods before and after the watermelons force a 20% increase in rates.

It certainly would be nice and clean if a simply correlation between sea level rise and solar activity actually existed, but none does. Fortunately the Grace satellite data clearly show where all the ocean water went during the big drop in 2010-2011, and rather than being based on solar activity, if was based on the activity of the large La Nina of the period. The most current La Nina has not been quite as strong of course, allowing much of that ocean water to begin draining back from the flooded land areas back to the oceans and, not coincidentally, ocean levels have started going bck up. Would I be so lucky to be around in 2040 (and even more, to actually care about any of this then) it would be quite interesting to compare you sea level decline forecast, based on your “the sun did it” theory, with what the actual rise will be. I suspect we’ll continue to see the ocean level fluctuate up and down with the ENSO cycle (a much tighter correlation than solar by the way), and that fluctuation will ride on top of the general (and perhaps steepening) uptrend, as more and more ice melts in Greenland and Antarctica.

What happened ’60-62? Dam building downstream?
###
A couple of very wet years in a row, the type of thing that happens rarely. This is a well documented event. Greenies don’t like to talk about it much because they like to use the early 60’s as their base-line to compare with current conditions as proof of environmental degradation.

How many times have I read on this site that “correlation is not causation.” An interesting series of graphs, but I don’t believe I’ve heard a theory that explains how solar activity and sea level are linked.

It’s pretty funny to see folks here who, apparently, believe in IPCC models but won’t accept the graphs demonstrating correlations between sun spot number/solar cycles and lake and sea level, even though the consistency between those phenomena is tighter than anything ever observed between IPCC climate models and reality (and not a Michael Mann sort of reality). As far as a mechanism between sunspot activity and changes in sea level goes, it may be, given the recent results from CERN, that reduced cosmic ray flux with increased sunspot activity results in reduced cloud cover leading to increased ice melting and sea level increase and vice versa. This doesn’t explain what’s going on in Lake Victoria unless there are changes in weather patterns from these changes in cosmic ray flux that could increase or decrease the lengths of the rainy seasons. As far as Replicant’s claim that the Lake Victoria graph is missing 40 years ” to get somekind of fit”: ha ha ha, come on, man, think a little. If you have to eliminate something to “get somekind of fit” you’d have to eliminate part of one data set or part of another to move either into “somekind of fit” with the other. The graph is focussing on the two periods of greatest variability in lake levels as indicated in the graph labels.

Bernard J. says:
February 5, 2012 at 5:58 am
Erm, apples and oranges.
Do people here really not understand why this difference matters?!
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You do know what river Lake Victoria feeds and where it ends up?

Inigo Jones was a well known long range forecaster who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Australia. He produced almanacs for farmers which were amazingly accurate even for decades ahead and even for after his death.
His methodology was heavily based on sunspot cycles and other climate cycles which he used long before regular forecasters even bothered to study cycles. Thus, he was derided by the regular weather forecasting establishment of the day.
He was unable to properly train an apprentice, Lennox Walker, who failed miserabley in his forecasts. So the ideas and genius of Jones was lost, but perhaps, now, after almost 100 years the ‘sunspot’ aspect of climate may be revived.
As for reasons why sunspots may affect climate they are no more scarce than the reasons why CO2 is said to cause change. It may be that the effects of solar sunflare/magnetic/proton storms are as much to blame.

Sorry Mr Archibald, but without a mechanism you can’t prove causation. This is from Dr. Simon Holgate whose data you use:

“Many people have tried to link climate variations to sunspot cycles. My own feeling is that they both happen to exhibit variability on the same timescales without being causal. No one has yet shown a mechanism you understand. There is also no trend in the sunspot cycle so that can’t explain the overall rise in sea levels even if it could explain the variability. If someone can come up with a mechanism then I’d be open to that possibility but at present it doesn’t look likely to me.
If you’re interested in solar cycles and sea level, you might look at a paper written by my boss a few years back: Woodworth, P.L. “A world-wide search for the 11-yr solar cycle in mean sea-level records.” Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 80(3) pp743-755
You’ll appreciate that this is a well-trodden path. My own feeling is that it’s not the determining factor in sea level rise, or even accounts for the trend, but there may be something in the variability. I’m just surprised that if there is, it hasn’t been clearly shown yet.”

And “Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown” to prove a solar relationship not only makes one laugh but suggests you are no closer than anyone else to proving a relationship. It is much more likely that none exists David.

Some bureaucrats in the state capital have consulted giant computers fed by discredited UN climate models to draw up a Grand Plan which will dictate who can live where and do what, all along the Queensland coast.

These Big Nannies say they will save sea-siders from the dangers of inundation and erosion caused when global warming melts the ice caps and causes sea levels to rise. To cope with this vague future threat to property values, they have caused certain destruction of property values now with their anti-development plans.

There are risks and attractions attached to any property, and those features are reflected in the property’s value.

Most towns and cities are located on or near flood plains. These plains, formed by past floods, will be inundated by some future flood. That risk is far more certain than those generated by manipulated models of future climate.

All land is subject to some risks which may include dangers from bushfire, cyclone, drought, erosion, earthquake, tsunami, plagues and pests, all of which will affect more properties within the lifetime of anyone living today than will be damaged by rising sea levels.

Queensland’s Coastal Management Plan is not a protection for sea-side properties – it is land sterilisation that will immediately erode the value of all such properties.

Every land owner has to balance risks vs attractions for any piece of land. Some will win, some lose. Some will be stupid and pay the price of stupidity; some will insure and relax; others will knowingly accept the risks in return for lower purchase price.

With the coastal management plan, all sea-siders will suffer and have no choice in the matter.

Bureaucrats should butt out and concentrate on ensuring that any government infrastructure like roads, railways, water supply, airports and electricity can withstand inevitable risks such as floods, fires and giant waves.

Nick Kermode says:
February 6, 2012 at 1:13 am
For a moment there, I thought that Mr Kermode was saying that I am a better scientist than the great Professor Woodworth, because I could find the solar – sea level relationshipo when he couldn’t. But it is best to go back to the source document. In Professor Woodworth’s own words from 1985, coming up on 30 years ago,”At the highest European latitudes the MSL solar cycle is in antiphase to the sunspot cycle while at mid-latitudes it changes to being approximately in phase.” So, Professor Woodworth did find the solar signal, which means that I haven’t made a discovery. We are simply rediscovering things that were done in climate science many years ago before the field got corrupted.

Mr Archibald, you did leave out the last line of the abstract you quoted. That being,

” Elsewhere in the world there is no convincing evidence for an 11-yr component in MSL records.”

This however does not address my point and neither does the paper. Without a mechanism it is correlation only. Maybe even coincidence, which would certainly explain the data disagreeing with your theory over 50% of the time and the whole rest of the world showing no similarities at all. If you are a skeptical person surely this must intrigue you and make you ask questions of yourself and the science.

So, correct me if I am wrong, you are basing your theory from a graph that leaves out the last 13 years of data ( which completely disproves your theory ), completely cuts out and ignores 40 years or 40% of the historical data and does not explain the increasing sea level TREND? Then you come back to comments on your article merely with quote mined statements from thirty years ago that don’t address the points made. I don’t know your background but this seems like terrible science to me.

Why is it that now since when you stopped your graph in 1999 (why????) sea level has been rising and the solar cycle falling? With no trend upwards in solar cycles why is the sea level trend going up? Why are you relying on thirty year old papers in a field that has advanced so much? Why are you leaving out half the available data? Why are you leaving out the most recent, most accurate data? Why are you leaving out caveats from people you quote? Why do you not mention Prof Woodworths more recent work, views and avenues of research? Why do you feel the need to quote mine?

Lots of questions I know but if you could just find the time to answer my question about leaving out 53 years of 111 years data it would be helpful to me understanding where you are coming from.

To those here agreeing with Mr Archibald I ask, if this was James Hansen presenting you with a theory he “proves” by ignoring more data than he includes what would your response be? You would tear him to shreds. Wouldn’t you?

Nick Kermode says:
February 6, 2012 at 7:02 pm
There are none so blind as those who will not see. There are four solar minima in the 20th century during which sea level rise went negative. It did not go negative any other time. That is all that is needed to be known. So Professor Woodworth, and most likely others, found a solar signal in sea level rise before me. But I figured out the relationship of 0.045 mm per sunspot number and was able to go into prediction mode. I have advanced our understanding of the World we live in. I feel a peer-reviewed paper coming on.

Certainty in something so complex is absurd Mr Archibald. You can’t ignore as many data and observations as you do and be certain you can explain it all. Your theory explains virtually none of the long term observations. If it IS the sun why are there so many periods where observations go in opposite directions? With no underlying trend in solar cycles why is there an underlying long term sea level trend? These are just some genuine questions that wont just go away because you believe you know “all that is needed to be known”. Certitude is not certainty. Thank you for your replies.

As you are currently knocking about on this thread, perhaps you could answer a few questions.

You said:

The rise over the 20th Century has been slight, so slight that it can be compared to human hair which on average is 0.1 mm thick. The rise has been an average of 5 human hair widths per annum, with most of that over 60 years ago.

1) Your last two graphs, depicting sea level at Fort Denison, have y axes scaled upward from 6800 (only one graph indicates that the units are millimetres). Given that Fort Denison has an elevation of 1.41m above the Australian Height Datum, and that “[t]he highest recorded water level at
Fort Denison (since 1914) was 1.475m AHD on 25 May 1974, some 65mm higher than the
current entry point to the Fort”, to what measurement(s) are your scales referring?

3) The “rise over the 20th Century” was essentially linear, whether considering global sea level rise or Pacific Ocean rise, and in either case there is no discernible rise “most[ly]” occurring “over 60 years ago” – to what phenomenon are you referring?

Australian sea-level records for the period 1920 to 2000 clearly indicate a rise in relative mean sea level. Averaged around Australia, the rate of increase is about 1.2 mm per year. This value is less than the global increase in eustatic sea level for two reasons. First, the sea-level rises presented here are relative sea level and do not include any correction for ongoing crustal motion. To estimate eustatic sea-level change from the data from the Australian sites, the rates of sea-level rise would typically need to be increased by about 0.3 mm per year…

Should you not account in your figuring for eustatic changes that affect recorded sea level rise values at a rate of 0.3 mm/yr, especially when non-accounting may influence how you calculate future rates of sea level rise?

6) The IPCC (AR4) estimated global average eustatic sea level rise over the period from 1961 to 2003 (similar to the Newcastle recording period) at 1.8 ± 0.5 mm/yr. Do you consider that future local rise will proportionately mirror global rise?

7) If you answer “yes” to (5), do you accept that warming is accelerating, and thus that previous rise will be less compared with future rise, and indeed that the current rate of rise is greater than the 1961-2003 rate of rise?

8) Assuming that the Lake Macquarie City Council’s model of sea level rise simply reflects the median rise indicated by the IPCC (0.59 m to 2100), with account for local rise due to a warming East Australian Current (0.12 m) and consideration of potential further ice melt (0.20 m), what part of the modelling do you specifically take umbrage with?

9) If you answer “no” to (5), do you completely discount the influence of global warming on sea level rise?

10) Do you understand that Lake Macquarie is a coastal lake with a surface area of 110 km2, and that it is connected to the Pacific Ocean via the shallow Swansea Channel (white on the map), which is approximately 380 m wide and 2 km long? Do you realise that during very heavy rains the Lake’s level can for days rise to well over half a metre or more over the usual high tide level, especially at the northern end of the Lake? Do you realise that even with the best case scenarios fromthe IPCC, a combination of unusual surging storms, flooding and warming-induced sea level rise could cause flooding even over the Council’s forward planning?

I have a lot more questions, but I will stop at a neat ten for now.

As someone who lived a stone’s throw fromthe lake for 30 years, I find it bizarre that you choose to write a piece such as this, and that you used Lake Macquarie as a case study. I can only surmise that your interest in this area stems from a desire to resist the Council’s revision of future development policy. If so, I would suggest that such resistance is misguided. Take for example the area at the northern end of the lake – there suburbs such as Marmong Point, Fennel Bay or Fassifern (just for examples) where even today a big flood on top of a king tide would threaten houses.

If there is even the chance of only the optimistic increases in future sea level, then Lake Macquarie City Council’s planning revision is wise indeed.

Bernard J. says:
February 7, 2012 at 4:51 am
The warmers come out one by one. Anyone who uses the discredited IPCC AR4 as an information source is also a discredited element, to use a term from the Marxist lexicon. What you should be doing is examining the difference in rate of rise of sea level between the Jason satellite as determined by CU at Boulder and the Envisat satellite run by the Europeans. It is said that “One interesting aspect of the mission is the low rate of global mean sea level rise which it (Envisat) has measured over the first eight years of the mission: just 0.5 mm/year, which is about 1/4 the rate of GMSL rise measured over the same period by the Jason-1 satellite.” Envisat has been going for 8 years, so the difference now is 1.4 cm. Nobody around the world has seen 1.4 cm in the last 8 years. So, either one party or the other is either unable to read their instrument properly or is cooking the books. Guess who is cooking the books – the one reporting a rate of sea level rise that is four times the other.

Apart from the 1998 and 2010 El ninos, the blue line is following the shape of the solar cycle exactly! I am talking about the proton flux maximum in 2003/04. Still going down with the Ap Index and solar wind flow pressure. Beautiful confirmation! CU’s pothole is turning into a chasm.

OK David Archibald, I will take your refusal to answer my questions as a simple unwillingness and/or inability to do so.

Perhaps, then, you will answer some others…

Anyone who uses the discredited IPCC AR4 as an information source is also a discredited element…

1) What information in AR4 is “discredited”? Who discredited it? Does such discreditation – if it actually exists – discredit the rest of AR4? Are you not employing the logical fallacies of both poisoning the well and of guilt by association?

It is said that “One interesting aspect of the mission is the low rate of global mean sea level rise which it (Envisat) has measured over the first eight years of the mission: just 0.5 mm/year, which is about 1/4 the rate of GMSL rise measured over the same period by the Jason-1 satellite.”… So, either one party or the other is either unable to read their instrument properly or is cooking the books.

2) Are these really the only two alternatives that you can think of?

Guess who is cooking the books – the one reporting a rate of sea level rise that is four times the other.

3) And do you have evidence of this?

…a rate of sea level rise that is four times the other.

4) Have you compared the two rates to independent surface gauge readings in order to confirm which is closer to reality?

Apart from the 1998 and 2010 El ninos [sic], the blue line is following the shape of the solar cycle exactly!

5) Erm, on the graph to which you linked the “blue line” – or global mean sea level – is tracking the Multivariate ENSO Index, which is not a measure (nor is it a proxy) for “solar cycle”. Are you saying that it is?

I am talking about the proton flux maximum in 2003/04.

6) I’m sure that you think you are, but you are presenting no statistical or other mathematical analysis to support your contention. What scientific analysis do you have that provides “[b]eautiful confirmation”?

And back to your original post:

7) In your “updated” graph the rate of sea level rise precedes an increase in “solar cycle” (sunspot numbers, by the looks of it) 4 out of 9 times. What mechanism accounts for this if “solar cycles” are the causative factor?

8) The rate of sea level rise is high when “solar cycles” are low, on three nadirs of “solar cycle”. What mechanism accounts for this if “solar cycles” are the causative factor?

9) Why are you considering the rate of sea level rise, which is after all a derivative function? It is entirely plausible for the “consensus” physics of global warming to be directly increasing sea level over time whatever spurious comparison might be imagined in the astrology of sunspots, and there is no acknowledgement of this in your arcane focus. A graph of sunspot number versus absolute sea level is easily constructed and demonstrates that point well, to anyone who has the cerebral competence to think it through.

10) I’m also curious about the method you employed to construct your graphs, and how you analysed statistically any ‘correlation’ that you perceive. You have no reference to primary data sources, and also a couple of your graphs lack units or are otherwise ambiguous about the nature of the parameters depicted. You make much of the apparent relationship between “solar cycles” and sea levels, but it seems to be eyecrometer measurement – hardly a mathematical analysis, especially when there are underlying discordances that would seem to contradict a casual eyeballing assumption of correlation.

I have tried to replicate your graphs, and I find that your “rate of sea level rise” trajectory appears to be smoothed to at least several years, a manipulation which removes many of the discordances between changes in that parameter and in sunspot numbers over time – a result that would seem to refute your thesis if properly accounted for. Further, I am curious about the nature of your smoothing methods, as the ones I use give me somewhat different trajectories.

Do you have a publication-level methodology available for replication purposes?

Finally, I have not yet done more than very abstractly hint at the rather involved statistics that are required to properly identify correlations between a response variable and periodic phenomena – statistics that you don’t seem to have presented. This link might help to tweak a thought or two about the problem:

Given the history of sea level for the last 20,000 years, is there any reason to expect a significant increase? From any cause?

Yes, of course there is – humans are emitting fossil carbon dioxide, which is warming the planet over the relatively stable mean of the period following the last glacial-maximum. This will cause the sea level to rise, in a manner similar to when alterations in orbital forcing brought the planet out of the the last glacial-maximum in the first place.

And as your strawman graph shows, that warming increased the sea level too.

Your question is predicated on the assumption that all forcings have remained essentially constant since the last glacial-maximum. As it is trivially obvious that the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse’ gases are currently and markedly increasing, your premise is incorrect.

No one has mentioned it, but the periods where there is no correlation seem to line up with the ~30 year PDO’s (Pacific Decadal Oscillations). These have been consistently expected and well documented. They also explain the acceleration of temperatures from the early 1900’s where global warming was as steep at from from early 70’s through 1998. There is an overlap of sunspot activity with these PDOs which trends positive and negative. Remember the global cooling ending about 40 years ago?